Sight for sore eyes! We’re out after 40 days in a cave
BLINKING in the sun, 15 volunteers have emerged after 40 days and nights sealed off from the world in a cave.
Spectators applauded as the group – in sunglasses to protect their eyes after so long in the dark – stepped out, with one announcing: ‘It’s really warm!’
In the cave – where the temperature was 10C (50F) and humidity 100 per cent – the eight men and seven women in the £1million Deep Time project had no contact with the outside world.
With no watches, members relied on their biological clocks to know when to sleep, wake and eat. They counted days in sleep cycles, not hours.
Scientists at the Human Adaptation Institute’s labs in France and Switzerland used sensors to monitor their sleep patterns, social interactions and behavioural reactions. One was a tiny thermometer in a capsule which they swallowed to transmit data to a portable computer before it was expelled naturally. When scientists entered the cave at Lombrives, in the Pyrenees, to tell them experiment was over, many had miscalculated – thinking they had another week to ten days to go.
Although tired, two thirds asked to stay longer to finish projects.
Organising projects without being able to set a time to meet was challenging, project director Christian Clot said, adding: ‘It’s interesting to observe how this group synchronises themselves.’
Scientists hope the experiment will help them understand how people adapt to drastic changes in environments.
One of the group, Marina Lançon, 33, said she was happy to hear birdsong but added: ‘It was like pressing pause.’